IBM.. big Iron, knew it well.. couldn't make the leap to the Cloud Iron
Big Iron was the Cloud before anybody invented that idiotic term. The Cloud is just a return to the past, and all its problems, only with worse security and reliability.
You mean until more customers realize that IBM (a/k/a India Business Machines) services and software is overpriced garbage, and that it's better to have it done in the US (often in-house) if quality is your concern, or to deal directly with India if lowest cost is what you want.
IBM used to be known as the company that nobody ever got fired for buying from. They were expensive, but their stuff worked damn well and their service was phenomenal. Nowadays they're just another ripoff whorehouse living on memories of a once great name. Customers will eventually catch on to that.
This is also how the US is screwing itself in the long (or maybe not so long) run. By throwing money at the latest fad or bubble, that's likely here today and gone tomorrow, or which can at least be easily duplicated, we're depriving real industry of investment. Sell them off to China - we'll invest in Snapchat!
Meanwhile China is investing in industry that produces real products, and the US is outsourcing such production (or even just selling it to China). By "real products" I mean services as well as goods, but useful services instead of games that go from boom to bust in no time. We're seeing an echo of the dot bomb era. FB has a P/E of 144, and they're one of the more substantive companies. Meanwhile GE is teaching China how to build jet engines. That's an industry that's so difficult to enter that there are only three players worth talking about (GE, Pratt-Whitney and Rolls-Royce), two of them are American, and all of them have been in the business since the first jet engines were produced at the end of WWII. That's not a business you can enter by buying a few servers and putting something that's (temporarily) cool on them.
You would have gotten a complaint from me right away (albeit politely at first). Music destroys my concentration. I know other people are different, so let them use headphones.
Am I the only programmer in America who still has his own office
Probably. I had one back when I was a very junior engineer, and there was nothing unusual about it back then. I worked best that way. Nowadays it's very unusual.
Hell, I'll beat that. I had to endure two women talking very explicitly about their last births. Ain't no stacked wall of manuals that can keep that out.
I assume you're a man (as I am), but I'll guess you don't have kids, or at least didn't see them born. After that, you wouldn't bat an eyelash at such stories, any more than you'd think much of (literally) handling shit when they're still in diapers.
Much as I dislike open office plans, you do have territory in the form of your desk and a small area near it. It's the same as traditional electronics labs, where there are long lines of benches and no partitions. Your bench is your territory.
Separate Office... many questions are much more difficult to ask via Chat... why the fuck bother coming to an office building
Were you forbidden to go to other people's offices to talk to them? Just to make it easier, in places I've worked where I had an office, everyone kept the door open except if they were doing something that would distract/annoy others (e.g. small meeting).
Open offices encourages collaboration but discourages deep thinking. This has been my experience and there are studies that back this up.
In other words it sucks for things that require sustained concentration, like programming and engineering. If you're supposedly in one of those fields, and you don't need to concentrate, then you're probably doing no more than glorified clerical work.
Yes, it's useful to informally hear about other things going on in the project, but continual eavesdropping (which also destroys concentration) isn't necessary. I find that the proverbial water cooler works fine. Even at times in the past when I had an office, they were kind enough not to lock me in during business hours. I could walk around to talk to other people (without disturbing everyone in the place), and could even go to the restroom without permission.
What about United States v. Reynolds, where the US government claimed the state secrets privilege (in fact, invented it for this trial) to cover up the fact that in 1948 a plane crashed because of an engine fire (before you say anything about keeping aircraft performance secret, you should know that engine fire problems on B-29's had been public knowledge for years).
Moreover, if it's not clear at exactly what level something should be classified, then whether something is supposedly under-classified is unclear, and hence isn't prosecutable as a crime, because excessively vague criminal laws are unconstitutional.
So if as you say, you can't criticize someone for over-classifying something, and it's never prosecuted anyway, and under-classifying it is too vague to be a matter of criminal law, then why (as per the GGP) is intentionally mis-classifying information a crime? It's a say-so law, to be prosecuted for threat and harassment, and yield a conviction only if you have an acquiescent judge who favors the government over the Constitution.
Except that we do not live in a democracy, we live in a republic.
It's time to update your dictionary, because you're using an 18th century definition of democracy. Back then democracy meant what we now call direct democracy. Nowadays the word has become more general, to the point where it includes both direct democracies and representative democracies. My apologies if the English language changes. I have trouble reading Chaucer too.
Even in Soviet Russia at the height of the cold war russians had rights. (It's interesting reading the real account of life in russian from people who lived it not the propaganda)
That's odd, because I know lots of Russians who grew up in the USSR, and not a one of them sees the USSR favorably compared to the US, in rights or anything else.
Chinese citizens have more rights than you do (as long as they stay within the political party rules)
"As long as they stay within the political party rules"? Right, they have lots of rights as long as they don't piss off the people in power. So do we Americans. As for comparison, I've never heard Chinese ex-pats say they had more rights or freedom in their native country. Perhaps you should educate them.
The Rosenbergs were executed as spies (and I have no particular beef with their classification as such) because they released information to the Russians about the atomic program in order to restore a balance of power, thus aiding the security of the United States.
How was the Rosenbergs' motivation determined? Did someone read their minds, or were their statements the only thing available?
Regardless, if that was their real motivation, then they should have made the information public. What they did is what spies do - giving information only to the enemy. And clearly it was information that the public didn't need to know. It was no secret that the US had the A-bomb. Construction details weren't pertinent. By contrast these whistleblowers were clearly releasing information, the secrecy of which kept people from understanding what their government was doing. It's not as though they released the concrete and specific details of how to build a stealth aircraft.
I'm old enough to remember the Watergate hearings, but as time goes by Nixon doesn't seem so bad.
What about Iran-Contra, which raised much more serious questions of unconstitutionality and abuse of power. No higher-ups were prosecuted. It makes Watergate look like an honest affair.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you talking about? It's FB marketing that modded him down to -1.
So you predict that in the future only the Amish will use Facebook?
No, Oldsmobiles actually ran and were useful.
Don't be too optimistic. Not all infectious diseases burn themselves out. Malaria has been endemic for thousands of years.
IBM .. big Iron, knew it well.. couldn't make the leap to the Cloud Iron
Big Iron was the Cloud before anybody invented that idiotic term. The Cloud is just a return to the past, and all its problems, only with worse security and reliability.
You mean global services and software, right? Because THAT is where the money is.
You mean until more customers realize that IBM (a/k/a India Business Machines) services and software is overpriced garbage, and that it's better to have it done in the US (often in-house) if quality is your concern, or to deal directly with India if lowest cost is what you want.
IBM used to be known as the company that nobody ever got fired for buying from. They were expensive, but their stuff worked damn well and their service was phenomenal. Nowadays they're just another ripoff whorehouse living on memories of a once great name. Customers will eventually catch on to that.
Do you realize how hard it's going to be to learn to write/type Manderin?
You learn to speak Mandarin, but to read and write Chinese. On the bright side, maybe they'll take pity on us and let us use pinyin.
the owners of Snapchat are a bunch of weapons grade morons for turning down an offer like that
You won't be saying that when Google offers $5B.
This is also how the US is screwing itself in the long (or maybe not so long) run. By throwing money at the latest fad or bubble, that's likely here today and gone tomorrow, or which can at least be easily duplicated, we're depriving real industry of investment. Sell them off to China - we'll invest in Snapchat!
Meanwhile China is investing in industry that produces real products, and the US is outsourcing such production (or even just selling it to China). By "real products" I mean services as well as goods, but useful services instead of games that go from boom to bust in no time. We're seeing an echo of the dot bomb era. FB has a P/E of 144, and they're one of the more substantive companies. Meanwhile GE is teaching China how to build jet engines. That's an industry that's so difficult to enter that there are only three players worth talking about (GE, Pratt-Whitney and Rolls-Royce), two of them are American, and all of them have been in the business since the first jet engines were produced at the end of WWII. That's not a business you can enter by buying a few servers and putting something that's (temporarily) cool on them.
You would have gotten a complaint from me right away (albeit politely at first). Music destroys my concentration. I know other people are different, so let them use headphones.
having a loud and explicit conversation about how big of a turd you just left in the men's room will probably get you reported to HR
Why? It's non-discriminatory. There's even a children's book called "Everybody Poops".
Am I the only programmer in America who still has his own office
Probably. I had one back when I was a very junior engineer, and there was nothing unusual about it back then. I worked best that way. Nowadays it's very unusual.
goyims
The correct plural is goyim; the singular is goy. If you're going to use Yiddish, at least be a mensch and do it right.
Hell, I'll beat that. I had to endure two women talking very explicitly about their last births. Ain't no stacked wall of manuals that can keep that out.
I assume you're a man (as I am), but I'll guess you don't have kids, or at least didn't see them born. After that, you wouldn't bat an eyelash at such stories, any more than you'd think much of (literally) handling shit when they're still in diapers.
Much as I dislike open office plans, you do have territory in the form of your desk and a small area near it. It's the same as traditional electronics labs, where there are long lines of benches and no partitions. Your bench is your territory.
There is a case study in the book Lean Thinking where the CEO liked it so much that he also sits in the open office.
Did that include when he was talking about how large the next unnecessary round of layoffs will be?
Separate Office ... many questions are much more difficult to ask via Chat... why the fuck bother coming to an office building
Were you forbidden to go to other people's offices to talk to them? Just to make it easier, in places I've worked where I had an office, everyone kept the door open except if they were doing something that would distract/annoy others (e.g. small meeting).
Open offices encourages collaboration but discourages deep thinking. This has been my experience and there are studies that back this up.
In other words it sucks for things that require sustained concentration, like programming and engineering. If you're supposedly in one of those fields, and you don't need to concentrate, then you're probably doing no more than glorified clerical work.
Yes, it's useful to informally hear about other things going on in the project, but continual eavesdropping (which also destroys concentration) isn't necessary. I find that the proverbial water cooler works fine. Even at times in the past when I had an office, they were kind enough not to lock me in during business hours. I could walk around to talk to other people (without disturbing everyone in the place), and could even go to the restroom without permission.
What about United States v. Reynolds, where the US government claimed the state secrets privilege (in fact, invented it for this trial) to cover up the fact that in 1948 a plane crashed because of an engine fire (before you say anything about keeping aircraft performance secret, you should know that engine fire problems on B-29's had been public knowledge for years).
Moreover, if it's not clear at exactly what level something should be classified, then whether something is supposedly under-classified is unclear, and hence isn't prosecutable as a crime, because excessively vague criminal laws are unconstitutional.
So if as you say, you can't criticize someone for over-classifying something, and it's never prosecuted anyway, and under-classifying it is too vague to be a matter of criminal law, then why (as per the GGP) is intentionally mis-classifying information a crime? It's a say-so law, to be prosecuted for threat and harassment, and yield a conviction only if you have an acquiescent judge who favors the government over the Constitution.
Except that we do not live in a democracy, we live in a republic.
It's time to update your dictionary, because you're using an 18th century definition of democracy. Back then democracy meant what we now call direct democracy. Nowadays the word has become more general, to the point where it includes both direct democracies and representative democracies. My apologies if the English language changes. I have trouble reading Chaucer too.
http://www.merriam-webster.com...
Even in Soviet Russia at the height of the cold war russians had rights. (It's interesting reading the real account of life in russian from people who lived it not the propaganda)
That's odd, because I know lots of Russians who grew up in the USSR, and not a one of them sees the USSR favorably compared to the US, in rights or anything else.
Chinese citizens have more rights than you do (as long as they stay within the political party rules)
"As long as they stay within the political party rules"? Right, they have lots of rights as long as they don't piss off the people in power. So do we Americans. As for comparison, I've never heard Chinese ex-pats say they had more rights or freedom in their native country. Perhaps you should educate them.
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
-- B. Franklin, after signing the Declaration of Independence
The Rosenbergs were executed as spies (and I have no particular beef with their classification as such) because they released information to the Russians about the atomic program in order to restore a balance of power, thus aiding the security of the United States.
How was the Rosenbergs' motivation determined? Did someone read their minds, or were their statements the only thing available?
Regardless, if that was their real motivation, then they should have made the information public. What they did is what spies do - giving information only to the enemy. And clearly it was information that the public didn't need to know. It was no secret that the US had the A-bomb. Construction details weren't pertinent. By contrast these whistleblowers were clearly releasing information, the secrecy of which kept people from understanding what their government was doing. It's not as though they released the concrete and specific details of how to build a stealth aircraft.
I'm old enough to remember the Watergate hearings, but as time goes by Nixon doesn't seem so bad.
What about Iran-Contra, which raised much more serious questions of unconstitutionality and abuse of power. No higher-ups were prosecuted. It makes Watergate look like an honest affair.
It is a crime to intentionally misclassify documents ...
How many people have been prosecuted for clearly overclassifying information?